


Partners, Murder, and Jazz

by SegaBarrett



Category: Battle Creek (TV), Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Case Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 17:18:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4028275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another day in Battle Creek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partners, Murder, and Jazz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Battle Creek or Whiplash, and I make no money from this.

Russ Agnew rose early that morning, and flew into his same general morning routine. Step one – roll out of bed. Step two – sniff clothes to see if he could wear them again without getting any comments. Step three – decide to wear those clothes because he was going to be late otherwise.

After all, he wasn’t like Milt. It wasn’t like he opened GQ and walked out of stores looking like the guys on one of the pages. For Russ, clothes were functional – you wore them, because walking around outside naked was not only illegal but often dangerous. 

He walked out the door and stepped into his car, turning the key in the ignition and letting out a sigh. Another day of dealing with goddamned Milt – though these days his feelings about his partner had become a little more complicated. If Russ were watching them both on some kind of huge Jumbotron in a Truman Show kind of deal, he might chalk it up to him beginning to “love to hate” Milt. That he just stuck around to see what sort of dick move the FBI agent was planning to pull next – and, of course, to try and uncover who he had pissed off enough to get him thrown into Battle Creek.

Oh, yeah, and there was that other thing.

He probably shouldn’t think about that right now. He had admitted that he was a hothead, and that was true throughout his life. When he felt something, he felt it in every pore of his body. When he cared about something or someone, it kept him up nights and made him want to throw things across the room if he was frustrated. That was how he was feeling, like he wanted to dig his nails into his palms and just throw the blood around to try and prove something, though he wasn’t sure what.  
When he arrived in Milt’s office, the taller man had a manila folder in front of him and he was flipping through large, glossy photos. 

“What happened?”

“Murder,” Milt replied.

“Why didn’t anyone call me?” Russ asked, rubbing at his face. It was too early in the morning for this. 

“I tried to, but you didn’t pick up your phone,” Milt replied, not looking up from the photos. Russ stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone, flipping it open. He pressed “Missed Calls” to be greeted by a message politely informing him that he hadn’t paid his bill.

Shaking his head, Russ looked back at Milt.

“Okay. So what’s the case?”

“Sharon McFallon, 45-year-old mother of two. Found bludgeoned to death when the mailman came to deliver the day’s mail. No one had heard from her in a while.”

“Was she married?”

“Yes.”

“Then it was the husband. Isn’t it always the husband?”

“The husband was out of the country with the kids,” Milt explained, “In Mexico.”

Russ raised an eyebrow. 

“Why were they in Mexico, but his wife wasn’t?”

“Well… Therein lies the mystery, doesn’t it?”

***

“I can’t believe this could happen.” Jerry McFallon, the husband of Sharon and father of the two young kids, was a tall man with brown hair and a red beard. Russ didn’t quite trust him, even though he had the perfect alibi. After all, it was always the husband, wasn’t it? If it hadn’t been him directly, maybe he had hired someone and gotten them to strike while he knew he would be out of the country. “No, I don’t know anyone who would ever want to hurt Sharon.”

Russ raised an eyebrow.

“You’re sure now?”

“Russ,” Milt said, putting a hand out. “Listen, Mr. McFallon… I know that you’re going through a great deal of stress right now, and I’m sorry that we’ve had to be asking you these questions. But we’re trying to find out what happened to Sharon, and any little thing might be the thing that helps us to find that out. So if you can just tell us anything… anything at all.”

Jerry reached up and rubbed at his eye, letting out a low sob.

“There… there was something else.” He looked up, blinking slowly. “Sharon… She was married before.”

***

“She was married to a Jim Neiman for four years,” Milt recounted. “They had one son, Andrew. But apparently she left when Andrew was a baby, and never returned.”

Russ turned up his nose. 

“So she walked out on her first kid and just went off to have a whole new replacement family?” he asked, “Why bother?”

Milt shrugged.

“I suppose she felt like there was something missing… But we’re not here to judge the victim, Russ. We’re here to figure out who killed her and bring them to justice.”

Russ briefly considered mocking him, but decided it probably wouldn’t serve a purpose.

“Okay, well… Do you think the ex-husband may have decided to track her down and get revenge? Maybe this was over child support, or something.”

“It says here that Andrew is nineteen, now – so that seems like a stretch. If there was going to be a support fight, wouldn’t it have happened quite some time ago?”

“Maybe he just found her. I’ll tell you, Milt, hell hath no fury like a baby daddy scorned. Who knows, maybe Andrew isn’t even his? Maybe he spent the last nineteen years raising some other dude’s kid.”

“There are some men who don’t really get upset by something like that,” Milt told him.

“What? Like you? How would you know, you’re not even married…”

Milt shook his head from side to side. It made Russ think of those safety videos on how to use a fire-extinguisher – pull the top, aim, press the lever, saw side to side. That was what Milt made him want to do all the time – pull his head off and spray it at something.

“I just like to think genetics wouldn’t really play that much of a role for me.”

“Welcome to the real world, Milt.” Russ reached down and grabbed a stack of files, walking out the door. “I guess we better go find the Neimans.”

***

Jim Neiman, Russ thought to himself, seemed to be the most boring person he had ever met in his life. He had a boring house filled with boring photos of his son and incredibly boring appliances. If this guy actually was guilty, it would be news to Russ – he wasn’t even interesting enough to be a killer. He wasn’t sure that the guy actually had the motivation.

“My son used to go to music college,” he explained as he passed a coffee mug from one hand to the other. “But then he dropped out. Now he’s moved out and he does those distance learning classes. But he works very hard.”

“You say that he moved out?” Milt inquired. “Do you happen to know where he’s living? It might be helpful to talk to him.”

“Oh, he’s living in a little apartment about ten miles from here. We still go to the movies every weekend.” The man beamed, and Russ felt a surge of annoyance. All of these damn happy families, even if underneath it all they weren’t very happy at all. 

“Did he have any contact with your ex-wife?” Russ inquired brusquely.

“With Sharon? No, not since he was a baby… Why? Did… did something happen to Sharon?”

***

When they arrived at Neiman’s apartment, the door was unlocked.

“So what do we do, Milt, if we open this door and he’s dead too, huh? What do we do if someone’s picking off this entire family one by one? You got a plan for that?”

Milt stared at Russ and shrugged.

“We would go through the evidence and see where it leads us. But an open door is hardly…” he pushed it open and stepped inside.

Russ liked to think he was a pretty open-minded guy, but his jaw dropped a little bit at what he saw when he looked inside.

A kid – well, he was nineteen or twenty, must have been Andrew Neiman – was sprawled out on the floor of the apartment, with silk scarves tied around his wrists to attach them together. A much older man, bald, was lined up at his back end and pumping vigorously into him.

“Battle Creek Police!” Russ managed to announce.

“FBI,” Milt chimed in, much more calmly.

“Andrew,” the bald man said, not pausing in his actions, “Are you going to say hello to our guests?”

***

“All right, so I’m guessing, uh, that… his father has no idea that you’re… I mean, that what is going on here, at this apartment…” Russ began. It wasn’t, as he reminded himself, that he had anything against gay people (that would’ve been pretty rich coming from him, he figured, as he recalled the way Milt’s fingertips had grazed his cheeks during – no, he wasn’t going to think about that. And it didn’t make him gay exactly because he was pretty sure that to be gay you actually had to like the person you were screwing.) But this weird old dude and his barely-legal ex-student and this weird 50 Shades of Grey shit, that was too much for Russ to be expected to handle in one day. 

“Why would he?” the older man, who Andrew had introduced as Terrence Fletcher, cut in, “He doesn’t need his Daddy to hold his hand regarding who he chooses to fuck.” He spit the words, glaring at Andrew as he did. “I like to think that Andrew’s old enough to make his own choices. So what brings the FBI here, anyway? I thought the sodomy laws were off the books.”

“Very funny,” Russ began.

“Andrew’s mother was found dead,” Milt told them. “We were just checking into anybody in her family to see if they could give us any information about what might have happen.”

Andrew looked up and blinked twice.

“My mother?” he asked. “I… That’s awful. That’s… bad, but I, well I haven’t seen her in years.”

“She didn’t love you,” Terrence cut in. “What the hell do you care?”

Andrew looked down sheepishly.

“Only you love me,” he said.

“Only I can deal with you,” Terrence grumbled. “Only I’m willing to put up with your shit to make you great.”

“Uh, whatever’s going on here, can it wait? It’s wigging me out,” Russ said. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you and your boyfriend were free to just waltz into my goddamned apartment! Get the fuck out,” Terrence told him.

As Russ backed up out of the door, he offered a brief, “He’s not my boyfriend,” but wondered why the hell it mattered anyway.

***

“Okay, so whatever weird shit is happening over there… I don’t think it’s hiding murder.”

“That’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?” Milt chimed. “It seems that Andrew is drawn to Terrence Fletcher because the man controls him.”

“Yeah, it’s some weird S&M shit,” Russ commented, “What does that have to do with the mother’s murder? I don’t think it was them.”

“But in the FBI… We look for clues wherever they may be. And I think this might be one that I’ve solved.”

“Yeah, thanks Will Graham,” Russ snapped back, “But how the hell can you have solved it when that conversation didn’t have anything to do with anything! I just nearly got myself killed by some big scary dude.”

“We need to go back and talk to them. There’s something that we’re missing.”

“So you didn’t solve it at all. You just pointed out that we’re missing something.”

“But I think I know what we’re missing.” Milt’s hand went out and touched Russ’ chin. “Trust me.”

***

“You help Andrew.” Milt was pacing back and forth, his hands on his hips. Russ was struck by just how tall he was; it was like his legs went on forever. It made Russ feel dizzy, off-kilter and off-balance. 

“That’s right.” Terrence’s hands were dangling in his lap as he narrowed his gaze at them. “Is this leading somewhere?”

“What do you help him with?”

“I help him become the best drummer. The new Charlie Parker.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about the day-to-day.”

Terrence shrugged.

“I don’t fucking know. I helped set up the cable. I pay half the rent. I occasionally lead him back into bed when he’s doing that sleepwalking shit…”

Milt raised an eyebrow, then looked at Russ.

“Sleepwalking, did you say…?”

***

“But she didn’t bludgeon herself,” Russ said as they walked around the scene. “Somebody bludgeoned her.”

“We assumed. Look at this,” Milt said, pointing up at a shelf. “She was sleepwalking. No one was around. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to go to Mexico. She couldn’t sleep in strange places, went walking around so she stayed home. It’s genetic – if Andrew did it, then she did it, too. The murder weapon…”

“A paperweight,” Russ spoke up, already annoyed at this. 

“It fell from the shelf when she walked into it. It was an accident. Not murder at all.”

Russ could have thrown things.

“Then why are we here? Why are we even here?”

He turned and walked away, hands in his pockets. It was useless.

***

Russ’ heart was pounding as Milt’s hands slid up and down his body.

Sleepwalking, Russ thought. Doing things without conscious thought. Doing things over and over and trying to pull something different from the experience.

Trying to rewrite your life without the right sheet music.

His shirt was pulled off and he was yawning, stretching, acting like this was an everyday normal sort of thing.

Some people sleepwalked through life.

He could feel something rising in his chest, feel hands on his crotch, feel the need rising.

His eyes were wide and he looked at Milt.

“Why did you get sent to Battle Creek?”

Russ had long since stopped thinking he’d get an answer.


End file.
